Book Logging
Jul. 31st, 2015 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckCleopatra in Space, Book Two: The Thief and the Sword - I think I'd be better off waiting until all of this is out and then reading the whole thing all at once. There's been a long enough gap between books one and two that I forgot who most of the supporting characters were and only had the most general memory of the conflicts and ongoing plot. I like the series a fair bit, but I don't adore it enough for the details to stick with me for long. I do wonder how the underlying time travel paradox will be resolved.
Emperor of China: Self Portrait of K'ang-Hsi - This consists of fragments of writings by the emperor himself that are selected, translated and arranged by Jonathan D. Spence. According to Spence's foreword, this particular emperor left a larger and more comprehensive written record of his reign than most emperors did. I found the book very interesting, but I definitely felt that I was missing a lot because I didn't know who the various people mentioned were or anything about the events alluded to. This is by no means a comprehensive biography/autobiography. It's small glimpses into K'ang-Hsi's life with no real explanation of the context. I'd really and truly love to read an annotated edition of this. I think I'd learn a lot more. My guess is that this book works best for a reader who already has some knowledge of the period.
Hadfield, Chris. You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes - I'm not sure I looked at every single image in this book because I tended to pick it up, open it at random and go through several pages, and then put it down again for a while. The photographs are gorgeous but kind of overwhelming when taken all at once. Scott enjoyed the book, too. He commented that this is exactly the sort of thing that space exploration needs to make it more real and relatable to those of us not directly involved.
Hillsborough, Romulus. Shinsengumi: the Shogun's Last Samurai Corps - I think this is the only non-fiction book about the Shinsengumi available in English. I wish it weren't because that means I don't have anything against which to check the author's biases-- Pretty much all of the English language texts he cites are things he wrote himself which doesn't inspire much confidence. He also has pet phrases that turn up every few pages-- 'will to power' in conjunction with 'propensity to kill' seems to be his favorite way of summing up the Shinsengumi as a whole and their leadership in particular. He also keeps talking about the Sun Goddess being on the side of the Imperial restoration factions as if that explains the Tokugawa defeat. I don't think Hillsborough much likes the leadership of the Shinsengumi or their particular code of conduct. The code of conduct seems to have been very, very rigid with death as the penalty for even what I would consider small infractions.
Lumberjanes volume 1: Beware the Kitten Holy - I was dubious about this one because the art looked so very much not my thing, but I'm really glad I tried it. I had a lot of fun reading this. I still haven't connected a name to any of the characters except for Jen, the camp counselor, but I think I can recognize the characters visually and connect some personality traits to each. Maybe. I'm not very good at that sort of thing. I did think that the girls looked older than I think they're meant to be. I got fairly interested in the mysteries piling up, and I really hope the author has a definite direction in mind. It's a pity I can't talk Cordelia into trying some of these comics-- this, Cleopatra in Space, and Princeless would appeal to her, I think. Or maybe not. They're not dystopias, after all.
Ravina, Mark. The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigou Takamori - I found this interesting but kind of frustrating. I think that what I actually want is a general history that covers the time that this book covers plus a bit. I got cranky every time Saigou was sent into internal exile or retired from public life because I wanted to know what was going on in the rest of Japan. I did find it interesting to see one man's journey through the complex political issues of the period (the end of the Tokugawa into the early years of the Meiji). If the author is accurate, Saigou was deeply uncomfortable with at least some of the changes he helped to bring about.
Riordan, Rick. Son of Neptune - Cordelia kept complaining that I shouldn't be listening to this when I haven't entirely finished the first set of books in the series, but she was still eager to put another CD in the player every evening. I had heard some largish fragments when Scott was listening to it, way back when it first came out, so there were bits that were familiar. I think I like the multiple points of view better than I did Percy's first person narration in the first series. I find myself wondering about things that I'm sure canon will never touch on, specifically about kids raised to be religious in some faith other than the Greek or Roman. Do they all give up on those other faiths or is it possible to reconcile something like Christianity with being the child of a pagan god? I'm also not entirely sure about the notion of making the Earth herself evil. It seems to me like something that ought to have a powerful impact on the nature of everything and everyone that exists in the world because every last one of them is dependent on this evil for their existence.
Rurouni Kenshin: Restoration 1-2 - This is an AU of sorts. Kenshin's backstory seems to be entirely the same (though I suppose it could be different and there's just not room to tell us that), but everyone else is just a bit different, not so much in personality as in how they're introduced to Kenshin and how they interact with each other. Kanryuu is the bad guy, but, instead of being a drug kingpin, he's an arms smuggler who likes to use dojos as storage and distribution centers, so he drives out the owners and takes over any way he can. Kenshin represents a major roadblock, so he hires a string of bad guys to try to take Kenshin out. I really enjoyed seeing these characters again, even if they weren't exactly the characters I knew before. I've added these books to my Amazon wishlist.
Tattersall, Ian. The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution - My main take away from this was that paleo-anthropologists can build amazing pictures based on very, very little solid evidence. A lot of species of hominids seem to have been identified based on one or two partial bones. I was actually more interested in the early history of the field than I was in developments in the last few decades, but Tattersall spends a lot more time on recent events. I was fascinated to read about how this particular field developed in isolation from related fields (paleontology, biology of various sorts) and how often scholars ignored things that were bedrock to other sciences.
Books started but not finished:
Coville, Bruce. My Teacher Fried My Brains - I'm not sure why I couldn't get through this, but I really, really couldn't. I don't think it was-- or not entirely-- the change in point of view character. I think some of it was that I was wondering about things going on with the adults, things the child point of view character wouldn't necessarily know about or register as important. It's frustrating to want to read about adults but not be able to handle most adult fiction.
Harris, Mark. Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War - I read about half of this. I stopped because I realized that I was getting tangled about which director was which and what each of them was doing at any given time. I suspect that part of the problem was that I don't know enough about movies to have a solid idea of who these people were. Capra was the only one whose movies I actually had connected to his name. Most of the movies mentioned, though, I had only the vaguest idea that they existed at all and that someone must have made them.
Hawkins, Scott. The Library at Mount Char - I'm not sure where I saw this recommended, but it didn't take me more than a few pages to be pretty sure this wasn't a good book for me. I read about five chapters, three at the beginning and two at the end, and nothing I saw made me inclined to change my mind. If this were a fanfic, it would be festooned with warnings. This did, kind of vaguely, remind me of Gaiman's American Gods, another book that was absolutely not for me, but that might be a plus for some readers.
Kobato v.1 -I didn't read very much of this, only a few pages. I wasn't prepared to deal with a fish out of water story, particularly when it consists of 'humorous' mistake after mistake that I'm supposed to find cute and charming. I also don't entirely trust CLAMP to carry a story through.
Emperor of China: Self Portrait of K'ang-Hsi - This consists of fragments of writings by the emperor himself that are selected, translated and arranged by Jonathan D. Spence. According to Spence's foreword, this particular emperor left a larger and more comprehensive written record of his reign than most emperors did. I found the book very interesting, but I definitely felt that I was missing a lot because I didn't know who the various people mentioned were or anything about the events alluded to. This is by no means a comprehensive biography/autobiography. It's small glimpses into K'ang-Hsi's life with no real explanation of the context. I'd really and truly love to read an annotated edition of this. I think I'd learn a lot more. My guess is that this book works best for a reader who already has some knowledge of the period.
Hadfield, Chris. You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes - I'm not sure I looked at every single image in this book because I tended to pick it up, open it at random and go through several pages, and then put it down again for a while. The photographs are gorgeous but kind of overwhelming when taken all at once. Scott enjoyed the book, too. He commented that this is exactly the sort of thing that space exploration needs to make it more real and relatable to those of us not directly involved.
Hillsborough, Romulus. Shinsengumi: the Shogun's Last Samurai Corps - I think this is the only non-fiction book about the Shinsengumi available in English. I wish it weren't because that means I don't have anything against which to check the author's biases-- Pretty much all of the English language texts he cites are things he wrote himself which doesn't inspire much confidence. He also has pet phrases that turn up every few pages-- 'will to power' in conjunction with 'propensity to kill' seems to be his favorite way of summing up the Shinsengumi as a whole and their leadership in particular. He also keeps talking about the Sun Goddess being on the side of the Imperial restoration factions as if that explains the Tokugawa defeat. I don't think Hillsborough much likes the leadership of the Shinsengumi or their particular code of conduct. The code of conduct seems to have been very, very rigid with death as the penalty for even what I would consider small infractions.
Lumberjanes volume 1: Beware the Kitten Holy - I was dubious about this one because the art looked so very much not my thing, but I'm really glad I tried it. I had a lot of fun reading this. I still haven't connected a name to any of the characters except for Jen, the camp counselor, but I think I can recognize the characters visually and connect some personality traits to each. Maybe. I'm not very good at that sort of thing. I did think that the girls looked older than I think they're meant to be. I got fairly interested in the mysteries piling up, and I really hope the author has a definite direction in mind. It's a pity I can't talk Cordelia into trying some of these comics-- this, Cleopatra in Space, and Princeless would appeal to her, I think. Or maybe not. They're not dystopias, after all.
Ravina, Mark. The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigou Takamori - I found this interesting but kind of frustrating. I think that what I actually want is a general history that covers the time that this book covers plus a bit. I got cranky every time Saigou was sent into internal exile or retired from public life because I wanted to know what was going on in the rest of Japan. I did find it interesting to see one man's journey through the complex political issues of the period (the end of the Tokugawa into the early years of the Meiji). If the author is accurate, Saigou was deeply uncomfortable with at least some of the changes he helped to bring about.
Riordan, Rick. Son of Neptune - Cordelia kept complaining that I shouldn't be listening to this when I haven't entirely finished the first set of books in the series, but she was still eager to put another CD in the player every evening. I had heard some largish fragments when Scott was listening to it, way back when it first came out, so there were bits that were familiar. I think I like the multiple points of view better than I did Percy's first person narration in the first series. I find myself wondering about things that I'm sure canon will never touch on, specifically about kids raised to be religious in some faith other than the Greek or Roman. Do they all give up on those other faiths or is it possible to reconcile something like Christianity with being the child of a pagan god? I'm also not entirely sure about the notion of making the Earth herself evil. It seems to me like something that ought to have a powerful impact on the nature of everything and everyone that exists in the world because every last one of them is dependent on this evil for their existence.
Rurouni Kenshin: Restoration 1-2 - This is an AU of sorts. Kenshin's backstory seems to be entirely the same (though I suppose it could be different and there's just not room to tell us that), but everyone else is just a bit different, not so much in personality as in how they're introduced to Kenshin and how they interact with each other. Kanryuu is the bad guy, but, instead of being a drug kingpin, he's an arms smuggler who likes to use dojos as storage and distribution centers, so he drives out the owners and takes over any way he can. Kenshin represents a major roadblock, so he hires a string of bad guys to try to take Kenshin out. I really enjoyed seeing these characters again, even if they weren't exactly the characters I knew before. I've added these books to my Amazon wishlist.
Tattersall, Ian. The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution - My main take away from this was that paleo-anthropologists can build amazing pictures based on very, very little solid evidence. A lot of species of hominids seem to have been identified based on one or two partial bones. I was actually more interested in the early history of the field than I was in developments in the last few decades, but Tattersall spends a lot more time on recent events. I was fascinated to read about how this particular field developed in isolation from related fields (paleontology, biology of various sorts) and how often scholars ignored things that were bedrock to other sciences.
Books started but not finished:
Coville, Bruce. My Teacher Fried My Brains - I'm not sure why I couldn't get through this, but I really, really couldn't. I don't think it was-- or not entirely-- the change in point of view character. I think some of it was that I was wondering about things going on with the adults, things the child point of view character wouldn't necessarily know about or register as important. It's frustrating to want to read about adults but not be able to handle most adult fiction.
Harris, Mark. Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War - I read about half of this. I stopped because I realized that I was getting tangled about which director was which and what each of them was doing at any given time. I suspect that part of the problem was that I don't know enough about movies to have a solid idea of who these people were. Capra was the only one whose movies I actually had connected to his name. Most of the movies mentioned, though, I had only the vaguest idea that they existed at all and that someone must have made them.
Hawkins, Scott. The Library at Mount Char - I'm not sure where I saw this recommended, but it didn't take me more than a few pages to be pretty sure this wasn't a good book for me. I read about five chapters, three at the beginning and two at the end, and nothing I saw made me inclined to change my mind. If this were a fanfic, it would be festooned with warnings. This did, kind of vaguely, remind me of Gaiman's American Gods, another book that was absolutely not for me, but that might be a plus for some readers.
Kobato v.1 -I didn't read very much of this, only a few pages. I wasn't prepared to deal with a fish out of water story, particularly when it consists of 'humorous' mistake after mistake that I'm supposed to find cute and charming. I also don't entirely trust CLAMP to carry a story through.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-31 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-02 03:45 pm (UTC)After I read the Hillsborough book, I dug through the old messages I had from that list and found several talking about the book. People seemed pretty irate about it and accused the author of being an Ishin Shishi fanboy who couldn't understand how heroic and wonderful the Shinsengumi actually were.
I take that with a grain of salt as I kind of doubt the Shinsengumi were really all that (I don't think I'd want to live anywhere near them), but Hillsborough clearly didn't like them much.
I suspect that, if the Shinsengumi hadn't captured certain people's imagination, they'd only be a footnote.